> My question is at what point in the year would such a strategy be best employed if one wanted to balance the concepts of both "treatment free beekeeping" and aggresive requeening to get there.

Hi, and welcome. I think you have in a nutshell a thoughtful, moderate and workable strategy. I would suggest that since using MAQs sometimes leads to queen loss, you might do the queen replacement *after* that. 

Alternatively, you could introduce queens early in the year, possibly March or April in your area. These can be queen replacements or splits. Then do the MAQs in midsummer, before the mite buildup is too far gone. This would leave time for the bees to raise a new queen if they need to, and you would have the benefit of a colony that has mite resistant bees since early in the season, so maybe the varroa level will not be too high at that point. 

I can't emphasize too much, though, that folks need to monitor mite levels, even if they don't treat. This could be done three or four times during the season, and would provide information that would be of a huge benefit to you in understanding the arc of varroa in your colonies, and in your area. 


PLB

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